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Cover of The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Trial

Franz Kafka · 1925

Kafka invented a mode of reality that now bears his name. The nightmare that looks like bureaucracy; the system that condemns without explanation. Every modern anxiety about power, legibility, and being trapped in a process you cannot understand: Kafka got there first, in 1925, writing in German in Prague.

Literary Fiction · the Pro canon

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.